On the DST shenanigans

[dsrtao]

The problem: Daylight Saving Time is a legal construct, governed in the US by the whim of Congress. After 20 years of a stable formula, they changed it.

The sensible answer: abolish it, and simply ask people to change their hours instead. (If work expects you in at 8, change that to 7. Keep a set of summer hours rather than changing the clocks.)

The answer that could actually be adopted: When Congress futzes with the clocks, they should guarantee that the change in algorithm is good for N years, and will give at least 2 years warning between passing a change and making it effective.At least that way it can be planned for a little more carefully.

Comments

[cvirtue.livejournal.com]

Waaay too rational!

[woodardp.livejournal.com]

Except it has been established that Congress cannot make laws to bind future congresses (well, they can try, but those laws have no effect), so there is no way to assure a truly stable algorithm.

My solution would be to remind programmers to document their assumptions, even if they think those assumptions are trivial and unchangeable.

side effects

[robertdfeinman.livejournal.com]

Well even with a patch my unix machine still says the local timezone is EDT.

The clocks on all the TV station's digital program guides are also still an hour off. I'm probably the only person in the country to notice since nobody but me gets broadcast HDTV and can see the embedded guide. Apparently the networks don't care since half the time they don't enter the data anyway.

[be-well-lowell.livejournal.com]

The whole idea of time zones is a legal construct. The natural system would be to give up the whole meddlesome government intervention completely, and define time as nature intended: by making noon the point where the sun is highest in the sky.

[mama-pipa.livejournal.com]

re: simply ask people to change their hours instead....

This actually happens in our Phoenix office, where AZ doesn't participate in Daylight Savings time. The only problem I see with this plan is if schools don't change their hours, and then you have complex problems coordinating kid pickup or something.